In the known electrical components, the bonded connections are realised as soldered joints or adhesive bonds, and ongoing development efforts are directed towards preventing the formation of dry joints and improving the load capacity of adhesive bonds. With soldered joints, a problem exists with regard to the thermal load on the flexible support material and of the components arranged thereon due to the heat of fusion that has to be applied to the solder. Flexible carrier materials that are able to withstand these thermal loads consist of thermally stable polyimides and other high-performance plastics, which are rather expensive to manufacture compared with other plastic films. Moreover, even small disturbances can result in the creation of “dry joints”, which must be avoided at all costs for the purposes of the operating safety of electrical devices.
Adhesive bonds are associated with the problem of the reduced electrical conductivity of the adhesive compound itself, so that these bonds are not suitable for conducting larger electric currents. Moreover, the production of adhesive bonds is more time-consuming than creating soldered joints because the adhesive compounds have to be cured in separate work steps.
US patent application US2009/0314522 A1 discloses a multifunctional printed circuit board with a conductor structure created by etching to which electrically conductive wiring elements are secured by ultrasonic welding. For the multifunctional printed circuit board, rigid carrier materials are used such as fibre-reinforced plastics designed with mechanical strength and thermal stability properties that enable them to withstand the thermal loads and stresses caused by ultrasonic welding. However, conductive pathways made from flexible carrier materials are not suitable for the bonding process described in US2009/0314522 A1 because neither the flexible carrier material nor the intricate pathways arranged on them would withstand the thermal loads and stresses to which they would be exposed in an ultrasonic welding operation.
The object of the invention is therefore to describe an electrical component and a method of producing the electrical component that may be used to produce the joints between the conductive pathways and the metal bodies particularly reliably and also inexpensively.